The Pharos Objective by David Sakmyster Page B

dragged him around the corner into a storage room.
     
    Gregor Ullman awoke
to find his wrists secured with duct tape, and the barrel of a Beretta pointed at his left eye. A dull pain registered in his legs, but in the drug’s aftereffects, he couldn’t quite place the source.
    “Hello, Mr. Ullman.” Nina sat on an upside-down plastic bucket, with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. “You know me, I’m told, so I’ll skip the introductions and get down to it.”
    Ullman grunted and coughed as a cloud of smoke rolled into his face.
She didn’t tie my legs
, he realized, and at once he sprang at the chance to escape. With a shout he tried to lunge forward, but only collapsed, howling in sudden, blinding pain. He rolled onto his back and looked down in horror to see the bright red slashes through the back of his pants.
    She had severed his hamstrings.
    Nina sighed. She hated this part of the job, and really didn’t like the sight of blood. At times like this, she reminded herself of the importance of the mission, the nobility of the cause. What they were doing, what she was a part of, would help preserve everything she cared about, everything she loved. All her life she had sought a way to stem the advance of time, to hang onto beauty and the perfection of youth; and when she had been singled out for this opportunity she knew it was her chance: an opportunity for a different sort of immortality.
    Of course she had lied to Caleb, tossing him a sympathetic tale about her childhood home and orchards, a story to snare him in her web. It was a secondary mission, but in all likelihood the most important. Caleb, after all, was the key, and she and Waxman had to get him to realize it. They had to prod him, guide him, get him to see, truly
see.
But it had to be soon. And it would be, if she played her part perfectly.
    She bent down and looked into Ullman’s straining eyes. “The morphine I mixed with your tranquilizer will help, but only for a few more minutes. I need you calm and able to answer questions.” She stood up and stepped toward him. “Tell me what I need to know, Keeper, and I’ll call for an ambulance on my way out.”
    Ullman groaned and turned his face toward the cold floor. “What do you want?”
    “Tell me,” she whispered, bending down and putting out her cigarette right in front of his face, “if Water is the first symbol.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me, and you know what I’m asking. Water. Is it the first symbol?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re mad.”
    “And you’re dead if you don’t tell me the truth.” She stood and placed her spiked heel against his neck. “Is it Water? Or Fire?” Nina held her breath. She needed him to confirm the first symbol to validate what their other informant had given up. Torture was never perfectly reliable, but in that case her boss had felt reasonably certain of the information they had elicited.
But not certain enough
. He wanted a second confirmation.
    “The first code . . .” she repeated, pushing down on his neck, “is it Fire? Is it Air? Earth?”
    Ullman coughed. His legs twitched, his arms flayed about in his pooling blood. “I told you, I don’t—”
    She increased the weight on his neck.
    “Aaaaaah—all right, all right!” he hissed, bringing his hand to his throat as Nina eased the stifling pressure. “It’s Water . . . Water! But you won’t get in. You don’t know the rest of the sequence. No one does.”
    “Don’t be coy,” Nina said. “Of course you know the sequence. What you don’t know is how to bypass the defenses.”
    “And you do?”
    “We will, soon.”
Very soon
, if Morpheus’s remote viewers continued with their hits, or if Caleb found his sight. But she guessed that the Keepers were in the same boat as far as the scroll’s recovery—hoping for a miracle. She tapped the barrel of her Beretta on the floor in front of his nose. “So you say it’s Water. What if I said I don’t